TIME PASSESswinging figure a sound issued from her lips — some-thing that had been gay twenty years before on thestage perhaps, had been hummed and danced to, butnow, coming from the toothless, bonneted, care-takingwoman, was robbed of meaning, was like the voice ofwitlessness, humour, persistency itself, trodden downbut springing up again, so that as she lurched, dusting,wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrowand trouble, how it was getting up and going to bedagain, and bringing things out and putting them awayagain. It was not easy or snug this world she hadknown for close on seventy years. Bowed down shewas with weariness. How long, she asked, creakingand groaning on her knees under the bed, dustingthe boards, how long shall it endure? but hobbled toher feet again, pulled herself up, and again with hersidelong leer which slipped and turned aside evenfrom her own face, and her own sorrows, stood andgaped in the glass, aimlessly smiling, and began againthe old amble and hobble, taking up mats, puttingdown china, looking sideways in the glass, as if, afterall, she had her consolations, as if indeed there twinedabout her dirge some incorrigible hope. Visions ofjoy there must have been at the wash-tub, say withher children (yet two had been base-born and onehad deserted her), at the public-house, drinking; turn-ing over scraps in her drawers. Some cleavage of thedark there must have been, some channel in the depthsof obscurity through which light enough issued totwist her face grinning in the glass and make her, turn-ing to her job again, mumble out the old music hallsong. Meanwhile the mystic, the visionary, walked thebeach, stirred a puddle, looked at a stone, and asked153
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